Sid Roth - Permanently Paralyzed Man Now Walking with David Yaniv
For seven and a half years my guest was paralyzed from the waist down with no chance of recovery until a miracle happened. Next on this edition of It's Supernatural!
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with a retired colonel in the Israeli Army. Freak accident. It could happen to anyone. He's working on a Moshav, like a kibbutz in Israel and he goes out to milk the cows, and he slips. It could happen to anyone. What happened, David Yaniv?
David Yaniv: I slipped.
Sid Roth: What happened?
David Yaniv: Fell on my back. They took me to the hospital, did an x-ray, myelogram, and they found out that I had two dislocated hernias. And I said, "Where do we go from here"? They said, "We're gonna operate".
Sid Roth: Two dislocated discs?
David Yaniv: Yes, hernias, the spinal cord.
Sid Roth: What was it?
David Yaniv: A hernia.
Sid Roth: Okay.
David Yaniv: And when I said, "Where do we go from here"? They said, "We'll operate. It's a common operation. Within ten days you should be on your feet again". And of course, I consented. But when I woke up from the anesthetic that very day, later in the evening, I found that I was paralyzed from the waist down.
Sid Roth: What did the doctor say?
David Yaniv: I called the doctor, it was the night shift, and he told me there's not much he can tell me. The professor, the next day, will tell me exactly what happens, but he said it is very common that after an operation there's a swelling, and that swelling sometimes causes paralysis. So by the morning it could be fine or it couldn't. But the professor will explain to me. The following morning, the professor came with an entourage of doctors and nurses behind him, came to my bed and said, "Mr. Yaniv, I'm terribly sorry. That's all I can say. Whilst we were operating we realized that we did something wrong. Something happened and you will be paralyzed for life, and my suggestion to you is to learn to live with it".
Sid Roth: Learn to live with it. I mean, a freak accident, a medical mistake, paralyzed for life. Learn to live with it. Well David, did you just give up immediately or did you try to solve the problem?
David Yaniv: Well quite honestly, I didn't realize what situation I was in at that particular time. You know, I'm not a doctor. And of course, you hope for the best. You always think it will happen to somebody else, not to you. So I didn't give up immediately. I didn't realize what situation I was in. But I braced myself for the worst at the same time.
Sid Roth: What did you investigate to get healed?
David Yaniv: Nothing. Really nothing. I just took the words of a doctor, of the professor at the time who told me that don't even expect to get better, learn to live with it. And ten days later, they took the stitches out, they sent me to a convalescent home, Beit Levenstein, which is one of the best in the world, because all the injured of Israel go there. And three months later after fitting me with iron caliber shoes, special brace with a catheter, of course, they taught me how to control my bowels, psychological treatment, they sent me home to the Moshav and into the real world.
Sid Roth: What was the real world like? All of a sudden, I mean, here you're a young colonel in the Israeli Army, wonderful family and now you're paralyzed from the waist down.
David Yaniv: You see, Sid, as long as I was in this hospital I felt relatively well because everybody around me was paralyzed, some even much worse than I was. But when I came into the real world this is when I realized I was paralyzed. The Moshav were nice to me. They rearranged the house for me. They put railings everywhere from bathroom to everywhere else. They were really nice. But I realized that I was not like everybody else and self-pity started to creep into my life like a cancer. I was jealous. Everybody was walking, including my wife and children. They were walking, I wasn't.
Sid Roth: How did your wife take this?
David Yaniv: Relatively well. I was the one who didn't take it well. I hated everybody including myself. I was bitter, really and truly bitter. I couldn't forgive the doctor. I couldn't forgive him.
Sid Roth: Did you, out of curiosity, did you sue the doctor?
David Yaniv: In Israel, you cannot sue. You see, medicine is free in Israel, unlike in America, where they can sue you for anything. In America, nobody sues.
Sid Roth: In Israel, nobody sues.
David Yaniv: Nobody sues, no.
Sid Roth: Okay. So did you at least try some alternative things?
David Yaniv: Oh yes. Oh yes. You see, on the Moshav, which was a very secular Moshav, by the way, very secular, nobody believed in anything, they sent me to transcendental meditation.
Sid Roth: Did that help?
David Yaniv: No, nothing. Nothing. Then they had this one guy who is still alive apparently today in Jerusalem, they say he's got electric hands and if he puts hands on you, you'll be healed, and he's got something, a success rate of 70 percent. It didn't work with me. I tried everything and nothing helped. And eventually I gave in. I gave in. I succumbed to the situation that I was in, as I was saying, well nothing's gonna help. I really have to learn to live with it.
Sid Roth: That's supposed to happen to someone else, David.
David Yaniv: Always.
Sid Roth: You must have been a very, very miserable, depressed, angry person.
David Yaniv: To say the least. I hated everybody, including myself. Including myself. It reached a stage where my wife used to work overtime so she doesn't have to face me, because I really wasn't a very nice person to live with.
Sid Roth: So it was a problem for you, but it was an equal problem for her and your family.
David Yaniv: Sure, very much so. Very much so.
Sid Roth: Were you able to do any work at all?
David Yaniv: Yes, I did. Firstly, the army kept me for a while for at least two years where I did desk work for the army. And then, according to law, they had to discharge me because they're not allowed to keep an invalid in the army. So they discharged me then I got office work on the Moshav. But here again, I used to– Sid, I used to sit in the window coming from work and watch people walk, and all I could think was hate towards them, and it wasn't even their fault. I was jealous they were walking and I wasn't.
Sid Roth: What about within your own religion, within Judaism? Did you look in that direction for help?
David Yaniv: Not at all. I was a secular Jew. I was never, ever religious. In fact, I thought that people who believed in God are nuts. I did not believe in God at all, not at all. And of course, the lifestyle on the Moshav was the same thing. We were a very secular Moshav. There was no synagogue.
Sid Roth: Did you despair of even life?
David Yaniv: At one point, yes, at one point.
Sid Roth: You know, this doesn't happen to you, but it happened to David Yaniv. We're going to be back right after this word. We're going to find out about a great, great miracle. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter just chatting here with David Yaniv. And David, former colonel in the Israeli Army has a freak accident, has surgery, which was supposed to be minor to fix his back. Of course, no surgery is minor, but it was classified as that. Freak accident, paralyzed from the waist down. He tried everything he could think of: the occult, the new age. He finally gave up, became an angry, bitter man with no hope. And time marched on, and seven and half years passed. Then what happened, David?
David Yaniv: One day it was winter. I stayed home. I'd caught the flu. At 2:00 there isn't much on Israeli television apart from children's programs. So I played with the dial and a program came in via Lebanon and I saw 700 Club, and I thought this is exactly what I need, you know, the club. I expected one of the programs with dancing girls.
Sid Roth: A nightclub.
David Yaniv: A club, you know. Only to find out they were talking about Jesus.
Sid Roth: Did you immediately touch the dial?
David Yaniv: No. What I did was I took my wheelchair, rolled it quickly to the door and locked the door so Sheila, my wife, and my children shouldn't see me. I mean, a nice Jewish boy watching Jesus in Israel? I mean, this does not happen every day.
Sid Roth: You're desperate enough to look at anything.
David Yaniv: So I watched. And what caught my interest was that people shared their testimonies. This particular day a woman shared her testimony, she had a lump on one of her breasts and they show you on an x-ray, the lump. And she goes to her church and the church prayed for her, and the next thing she insists to have another set of x-rays and that lump disappears.
Sid Roth: Did you believe that?
David Yaniv: I thought to myself, this is too much for my father's son to believe. You know, for healings, we have doctors. Who's this Jesus, all of a sudden? But watching it daily almost religiously, every day, because it caught, let me show you how I watched this program as a Jew.
Sid Roth: Okay.
David Yaniv: I thought to myself, why should I only feel miserable myself? Let me watch other people feel miserable for themselves. You know, this is how I watched this program, a religious program. But doing it month after month, literally...
Sid Roth: But you were hiding.
David Yaniv: Oh yes.
Sid Roth: The fact that you were watching this because if anyone else knew it would be embarrassing for you.
David Yaniv: Embarrassing, I mean, it was embarrassing lately, later on. But the thing is I watched it because later on after watching it for a while, I realized that these people were not actors. At the beginning I thought they were all actors. They were play actors, that's all, like we are sitting now. There might be somebody out there. There might be somebody out there watching and thinking to himself, now here's a man who's acting who's telling a story. But I'm here to tell you, God is no respecter of persons. What he did for me he will do, not might, he will do for you.
Sid Roth: So you're watching this television show, The 700 Club, and you're becoming...
David Yaniv: For two years.
Sid Roth: Two years?
David Yaniv: For two years, I've been watching it religiously, daily. And two years later there was this, I started to believe that I could be healed, that there must be something to it. And I started to pray for myself. I absolutely asked God to heal me and nothing happened until one day, when this television evangelist came on, and she said, she's no longer there, and she pointed the finger and she said, "There is somebody out there who's been paralyzed for years and as I'm speaking now he will feel a certain sensation and he'll be healed".
Sid Roth: Did you feel a certain sensation?
David Yaniv: Nothing. Nothing.
Sid Roth: So what did you figure? Didn't work?
David Yaniv: I carried on praying because I realized if it wasn't for me it must be for somebody else.
Sid Roth: Wait a second, that bitter, angry man that's feeling sorry for himself.
David Yaniv: Yes.
Sid Roth: Why were you praying for someone else?
David Yaniv: Because like I said, God is not a respecter of persons. If it wasn't for me, it just wasn't my timing yet. It must be for somebody else. People should keep on praying. No matter what the situation is, no matter how bad things look, keep on praying. So I prayed for somebody else. But that same evening, around about 10:00 it was, I was lying in bed, and the only way I can describe it is like an electric shock that ran down from my spine towards my legs.
Sid Roth: Were you praying for this to happen that night?
David Yaniv: Oh yes. That night, no. That night I was...
Sid Roth: Were you doing anything spiritual?
David Yaniv: I was reading a book.
Sid Roth: Okay.
David Yaniv: Reading a book.
Sid Roth: And all of a sudden this like electrical charge came to you.
David Yaniv: Electric shock from my spine towards my legs. My legs started shuttering in a way that I had no control over them and I didn't pay attention because a paralyzed person gets these unwanted movements every now and then.
Sid Roth: Right.
David Yaniv: So I thought this was one of those.
Sid Roth: Like a reflex.
David Yaniv: Yes, it's a reflex. And I went to sleep. The next morning, however, in order to get out of bed and strap myself into the shoes with the iron calipers, and the corset, and you know, the whole paraphernalia, I had to assist my legs to get out of bed. And as I touched foot, there was feeling. I touched myself everywhere else and there was feeling. And with the catheter, all of a sudden, I felt my bladder wants to work, something which I never felt for seven and a half years.
Sid Roth: Well did you, who did you tell?
David Yaniv: So here's my wife next to me in bed and I said, "Sheila, come quickly and see what happened". And my wife, bless her heart, she's South African, and this is how she did it. She said, "Rubbish. Close your eyes". And she took a needle and she says, "Where am I pricking you"? And let me tell you something, I stopped her right away before she's going to make sieve of me.
Sid Roth: You could feel everything?
David Yaniv: Every prick.
Sid Roth: But you're supposed to feel.
David Yaniv: I'm not supposed to.
Sid Roth: The doctors have given up on you.
David Yaniv: There you go.
Sid Roth: And even the psychics have given up on you.
David Yaniv: Everybody.
Sid Roth: Everybody has given up on you.
David Yaniv: I gave up on me.
Sid Roth: You gave up on you. But there wass one person that did not give up on you.
David Yaniv: Amen.
Sid Roth: So she's poking this needle. You say, stop. What happened next?
David Yaniv: We go to our local doctor on the Moshav. When I saw him disturbed, I realized something happened. He subsequently sent me to the Afula Hospital, which is the nearest town where we stayed, and they did an EMG examination, which is an electrical way of testing reflexes. I had many of those before. And the guy who did this says to me, "Everything is all right. You have to come back the following week".
Sid Roth: Everything is all right?
David Yaniv: Everything is all right.
Sid Roth: I mean, that's an understatement. Everything is all right? Everything is all, I'll tell you something, everything is all right.
David Yaniv: Amen.
Sid Roth: I'm speaking to you right now. There's someone that's so oppressed and so depressed. But I'm saying to you right now by the spirit of the Living God, everything, everything, everything is all right. We'll be right back after this word.
Sid Roth: Now David Yaniv, you left us hanging. The doctor says, everything is going to be all right. How did you feel?
David Yaniv: For the first time I saw not a glimpse of hope, but I really saw hope. I expected it to be perfect.
Sid Roth: Who did you give credit for this healing?
David Yaniv: God, right away.
Sid Roth: You knew.
David Yaniv: And I'll tell you why, because the following week I was invited to come to the hospital and there were neurosurgeons and neurologists from all over Israel. In fact, the professor who operated on me was one of them. And they examined me, and one of the doctors, wearing a kippah, a religious man, came to me and he says to me, "This is a medical miracle," after examining me.
Sid Roth: It sounds like one to me.
David Yaniv: At this point, I couldn't contain myself. And I said to him, "Hang on to your horses. This is no medical miracle. This is Yeshua". In Israel, Yeshua is Jesus. But Yeshua happens to be a common name in Israel, too. You know, many men are called Yeshua, like in Spain, Jesus, many men called Jesus.
David Yaniv: So this doctor, particular doctor, says to me, "Yeshua who"? And I was so glad he asked.
Sid Roth: I'm sure you were.
David Yaniv: Very glad because I told him exactly Yeshua who.
Sid Roth: You mean, after watching The 700 Club all of this time, eventually, did you become a believer?
David Yaniv: Oh yes, oh very much so. That very day they gave me a letter to the effect that this is a medical miracle. I'm sorry I didn't bring it with me.
Sid Roth: Tell me what the letter said.
David Yaniv: The letter said, very simple, it says like this, "We cannot explain how this happened, but we're glad that it did". This is how it ended. And of course, my case went into the Medical Gazette of Israel as a medical miracle and into the Medical Gazette of Britain as a medical miracle.
Sid Roth: I must ask you, your wife Sheila, tell me, how did this affect her? She had written off that she'd ever have a husband that could walk again.
David Yaniv: Yes.
Sid Roth: Do you know that in the United States of America they are spending millions and millions of dollars to figure out how the people that are paralyzed can walk? And, instantly/
David Yaniv: Instantly.
Sid Roth: You walked.
David Yaniv: Sid, I walked out of this hospital, you know, like the story in the Book of Acts, with all my calipers, everything in the wheelchair, on legs that were so thin, I mean, atrophy, seven and a half years.
Sid Roth: Right.
David Yaniv: No muscle worked, on legs that were fragile, just like this, skin and bone. I walked out of this hospital praising God. Praising God. And from that day onwards, Sheila and I, my wife Sheila, we witnessed to anything that moved. And when I say moved, I mean literally moved, the cockroaches in our Moshav were saved because they moved, anything that moved. And we're still doing it today, praising God.
Sid Roth: Now I'm curious. There are people that are watching us that are paralyzed.
David Yaniv: Yes.
Sid Roth: In one or more places in their body. There are people that are watching us right now that have cancer and have been given a death sentence.
David Yaniv: Yes.
Sid Roth: There are people that are watching us right now that have heart problems, people that are watching us right now that are hurting so, so bad. You said you were not, obviously, you weren't a special person. Why did God do this for you, David?
David Yaniv: Out of his love. That's one of the natures of our Lord, and that is love. His name is love.
Sid Roth: But you were an atheist.
David Yaniv: At the time, yes.
Sid Roth: And why were you an atheist?
David Yaniv: Well the simple way to explain it is because I just didn't believe in God. But the point is I, you know, being Israeli, and you know Israelis, you've been there many times, we're straightforward people. Whatever we cannot touch or feel, or see, we just don't believe in it. That's basically what we do. We have to touch it, to feel it to know it's there. Anything that is supernatural, which this program talks about, we don't believe in. Of course, I believe in it now, praise God.
Sid Roth: What about you? What about you? You're hurting so bad and no one sees it. You've got this facade like they have in Hollywood, on the outside, I'm happy, you're happy, I'm okay, you're okay. But when you're like David was with all the doors closed and it's just you and me, there's another person that's with you right now and that's God. That's God. And I can tell you, as David was speaking of the great miracle in his life, as David was speaking about that, I could feel welling up in my eyes tears, and I could also see them in David's eyes. Those tears were not, were not for the great miracle that happened in David's life. Those tears are the love of God. Oh my goodness, someone's neck was just healed in Yeshua, I His Hebrew name, how about you? In Yeshua's name, someone's neck all the way down the back, and there are people, you don't need that surgery any more. You bend over, you'll see you're healed. I am desperate to experience more and more of God's love. I'm almost like a drug addict. I've experienced so much of his love. He's been so good to me, so good to me. But I want more. There's nothing, all the money in the world, the best marriage in the world, the best children in the world. So you blink your eyes a few times and you're going to have a tombstone: "May He Rest in Peace". There's got to be something more to this life. The truth is some of you have some very, very complex and hurtful situations in your life. The first thing you need to do is forgive, not because you feel like it, but because God has forgiven you before you deserved it. The next thing you do is you repent of your sins. I mean, you don't need any complex type of prayer. You tell God, I am sorry, I've sinned against you, and tell him what you've sinned against. You don't have to search your memory and mind. You know exactly what you've done that's wrong. And then believe that the blood of Yeshua, the King of the Jews, the Passover lamb, has washed away your sins. And ask him to live inside of you and say, God, raise your hands like King David did. King David said, "I lift holy hands to God". Your hands are holy. You realize that. They're holy if they're under the blood of Yeshua. And say with your mouth, "Yeshua, I make you my Messiah and Lord". And watch the love of God pour like a river. It's like a river of God's love. More, Lord. More. There is a purpose for your life. Don't give up, give God. Give God. Go to him right now, right this moment. Go to him. He's waiting for you. He loves you. He's got such a wonderful explosion of love for you, real love. Real love.